1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates generally to a system and method for handling calls at a call center, and more particularly, to a system and method for rewarding a customer for calling back to a call center at a more appropriate time based on projected call volumes.
2. Background Art
In a many business situations, call centers are resource constrained. Take for instance the scenario where a call center is fielding telephone calls but is populated with a finite number of agents and can, thus, handle only a certain volume of calls. The call center may experience drastically different usage patterns at any given time. As such, during a time of high volume calling, calls that are directed to the call center may cause a caller to wait extended periods of time before reaching a call center agent.
Various solutions have been proposed and used to route customers among call centers to alleviate waiting times for a customer. One proposed solution is a carrier-based network routing scheme which uses a fixed or static allocation percentage to define how calls are allocated among several call centers.
Further, many Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) vendors provide overflow routing between their own ACD systems. When one particular ACD approaches its maximum capacity, calls are redirected to another ACD that has a lighter call load.
Also, software-based telephony integration systems have been employed to create a virtual call center enterprise. Such systems may use open, distributed software architecture that manages voice and data distribution across an enterprise. The software processes a combination of customer and contact center data by using user-defined routing scripts that reflect a company's business rules. The software is then able to route each contact to the optimum resource anywhere in the enterprise. While related art software-based solutions may provide a robust solution to allocate calls efficiently within an enterprise, they are extremely expensive to deploy, and are suitable for only the largest of call centers.
Accordingly, the related art methods can be costly to implement or resource constrained. Thus, there is a need for a relatively low cost, robust system that is able to use callback logic to determine if a callback should be offered to a customer of a call center based on projected queue wait times rather than having the customer wait on the line for a call center agent. The system preferably requires little in the way of hardware to implement.
The illustrative aspects of the present disclosure are designed to solve the problems herein described and/or other problems not discussed.